Candlelight vigil held for deaths
Officials still unclear about how two sisters, three children died
Days after two sisters and their three young daughters were found dead on the Santa Ana Pueblo, their deaths remain a mystery.
FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said Friday the preliminary autopsy results “have not indicated a clear cause of death” for Vanessa George, 25; her two daughters, Zoe Becenti, 4, and Chloe Becenti, 1; her sister, Leticia George, 20; and Leticia’s daughter, Haliegh Toledo, 3. Police had previously stated Haliegh was 1.
The women and children were reported missing from Albuquerque last week, and their bodies were discovered on a remote area of the Santa Ana Pueblo on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
The family is from the Navajo Nation and officials with Santa Ana said they don’t have affiliation with the pueblo.
Fisher said previously that investigators don’t believe they died from foul play by another party, but he would not clarify what that meant.
On Friday evening, family and friends who had traveled to Albuquerque from Arizona, Colorado and around the state, gathered at El Zocalo visitor center in Bernalillo, just outside the pueblo, for a candlelight vigil for the sisters and their daughters.
About 50 people stood in a semicircle around a memorial of photos, flowers, stuffed animals and candles, with their heads bowed over the flickering flames in their hands.
Family members addressed the crowd in Navajo. A member of the Santa Ana Pueblo also addressed the crowd.
Vanessa and Leticia’s mother, Marietta George, clutched a framed photograph of her daughters and granddaughters, and a “Hello Kitty” baseball cap that Vanessa had liked.
The sisters’ cousin Tiffany Begay traveled to Albuquerque from Colorado with her husband and two daughters after she heard about what happened to the sisters.
Begay said she had talked to Vanessa the day before she disappeared and she had told her about wanting to move back to be with her mother in Red Valley, Ariz.
She said that, since the bodies were found, the family has struggled to make sense of what might have happened and everyone has a different theory.
“She didn’t say anything about going to Santa Ana,” Begay said. “How they were found doesn’t make sense. Why were they there? It’s just so confusing.”